The fog and cold wind made the ladies' cabin the most comfortable place, and for a while the piano and the strong voices of the many veterans on board singing their familiar songs made the time pass pleasantly, but before dark the trouble began. About ten o'clock I went below, thinking I was fortunate to even secure a clean bunk in the bow of a boat where the state-rooms were all taken for two weeks ahead. My bunk-mate, a fine old gentleman from Kansas, had already turned in, but he came crawling out from his bunk, saying, "I can't stand this any longer." I did notice the boat lifted things up higher and let them fall lower than it did during the day, but I felt all right. "O, I stayed here too long, I guess," said my friend, as he started for the round box of sawdust near the bunk. A gentleman in the upper bunk had been leaning out of his bed, intently but quietly looking down in this same box for some time, but this doleful remark of my bunk-mate seemed to suddenly touch his sympathetic nerve, and they mutually, and at the same time, cast away all bitterness in the same small box of sawdust. My friend's head, which was the lower of the two suspended over the box, and which was scantily clothed with gray hair, received a shampoo of a variety of ingredients, but he scarcely minded this in his haste to get away, and I undressed and went to sleep after a while, notwithstanding the place was full of men apparently tearing themselves all to pieces during most of the night. Yes, I slept some but not as soundly as I have done, for the seventy-five sick men down there occupied my thoughts some. And after a while I got the notion into my head that the boat would not go down into the trough of the sea so far if I held myself up a little, so I did. When the boat went up, up, every nerve in my body tingled, and I felt a prickling sensation clear to the ends of my fingers and toes, and the higher up the boat went the stronger was the nervous action. But I did not feel sick. Then when the boat went down I straightened out stiff and rigid in order, if possible, to hold the boat. Although I saw it did not make much difference with the boat whether I tried to sustain it or not, yet I could not relax my muscles sufficiently to rest easily. But in the morning, before I could get washed, I found out what sea-sickness was, but only to a slight degree, and for an hour or two.